Thursday, October 29, 2009

The fall classic


Kind of drifted away from the game in recent years, baseball's changed alot since I was a kid. You got the wild card now, another division in each league, interleague play, you don't know who's juiced up and who ain't, it's a little more complicated now and some days I don't want to think too much. Games are longer too. Used to be on average about 2 1/2 hours, now they're regularly over three. After each pitch the batter has to step out of the box, adjust his batting gloves, scratch his nuts and then the pitcher's not ready. Can you not be a fan of your hometeam or even root against them? I'm not saying I'm one of them but I know some New Yorkers who feel the Yankees are arrogant, a few are even diehard lifelong Red Sox fans.

Good game last night, give credit where credit is due. The Phil's Cliff Lee had his spiked curveball down pat and economized his pitches well, pitched a complete game, almost a shutout save for one unearned run and had a blase kind of 'tude going which I liked. The way he caught that popup to the mound and then a grounder behind his back, 'twasn't nothing, I'm bored. There was a mist falling since the start of the game but the tv made it seem worse. Now Tim McCarver's kind of a polarizing figure, men either seem to like him or hate him but I like him. I like the way he dissects the game and he's not afraid to say someone made a bad call or a bad play, he'd rather speak his mind than be popular among the players. Joe Buck? good I guess.

George Will likes baseball, shows he's hip and not all nerd and that's cool. Greatest baseball player of all time? that's easy, Willie Mayes. Derek Jeter, went out with all the well-known babes at one time or another, Mariah Carey, Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson. Does anything happen or is he just a good guy that you can talk to and he's willing to listen? The Game's on the evil FOX network which works for me, wonder if Obama's watching. Oh and one more thing, Pete Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Can we do that for the guy before he passes?

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The politics of the Breast

A theme is going to be emerging here, actually it has poked its head up already in the past and I didn't really go looking for it. God knows I'm a busy man but for me it's almost a certitude and it's this:

There is a cultural, a societal preference in favor of the Woman. Her needs, her emotions, her overall health, her general wellbeing is of paramount importance and her perspective is almost accepted without question.

It's happened within practically the last few months, the Breast Cancer Movement. It's everywhere you go. Take supermarkets. Boar's Head has the pink ribbon thing down pat including pink deli caps for the ladies although I suppose men can wear them too and so you pass the deli and then you see just up ahead a big bin of Breast Cancer Balls for $9.99 each. In the bakery section you see a setup on a table of pink roses in vases and pink cupcakes and then when you're paying for your stuff the cashier asks you if you'd like to donate a buck to you guessed it but let's stop right here and pull this rig over for a minute.

There's nothing at all wrong with any of this. I was in a food store just the other day and forked over my dollar, WTH? there's a collective feel-goodism about it all and you're making a difference at the same time but where are all the prostate cancer displays? Where are the brown ribbons? where is the symbol of the whole Prostate Cancer Movement? (perhaps something to do with a finger, I leave that to your imagination). OF ALL the forms of cancer why is the Breast the thing? If I as a man give to Breast Cancer Research because it's socially required, politically necessary am I not slighting my own sex?

The theme I highlighted above will be a recurring theme throughout my blog now (that's a leitmotif for you people in Rio Linda California). Even when women do wrong or go bad it's treated differently. 'Member Lisa Nowak the astronut? initial reaction to her even among male commentators expressed more than a nod of understanding (yeah Sean). Most recently Steve Phillips' stalker, Brooke Hundley, well put it this way, everyone knows her elevator is stuck between the 4th and 5th floors but at worst it's treated in appropriate comedic fashion whereas the men stalkers most recently in the News of late were treated with the Utmost Seriousness, don't recall any jokes from the Jay. On the workfront I've noticed the workers most likely to be fired or at least ripped a new one are Men and this happens on a fairly regular basis. A woman could suck, a female boss can be atrocious but it's overlooked, there are really no repercussions and it took me a while to figure this one out in my own jobs but women are special although this won't be posted on the breakroom bulletin board as official policy. It all goes back to the movies from the olden days, women have that special aura, due to the nature of their sex men give them deference, men want to protect them etc. etc. Humphrey Bogart. It's why Mother's Day has always been a bigger day than Father's Day. Men just ejaculate and then roll over and go to sleep, women have to deal with the rest. Pro-choicers will deny this to the max of course but the act of feticide is really a political statement although they could just as easily make this statement by urging the woman to have the kid and then sue for child support but somehow this is better.

If you want to call this a masculinist screed go right on ahead, call me a male Andrea Peyser if you like but it's time Bill O'Reilly devoted a whole hour to a discussion of the Politics of the Breast. Devote a whole show to the prostate too, Bill could even bend over on the air not for titillation's sake, oh no, but to show the seriousness, the utmost gravity of the i-shoo. Somewhere deep deep down you know I'm right.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Do liberals hate wealth?


You know you never get a straight answer from these people. I wish folks would admit their biases from the outset and that includes President Obama and assorted flacks and hacks. In answer to my own question I would say in large part yes, whether they're animated by the Gospels (e.g. Hillary at least in her college days), liberation theology or merely subscribe to a secular philosophy is an open question but I do think they somehow see excessive wealth as inherently sinful, immoral, somehow wrong. OK so this doesn't explain the Hollywood crowd but Rush nailed that one years ago, the rich superstar liberals do feel great guilt over their great wealth and so they figure supporting the Democrat will help out the little guy, put a bandaid on your conscience. Again lack of candor, when was the last time you heard Whoopi Goldberg say "you know I can wipe my black ass with hundred dollar bills and in a quiet moment it does bother me from time to time." Now if you have as your premise that accumulating riches is wrong then it would seem to me that logically extended this would at least lead to a socialist outlook over time and probably a Marxist one, ain't hard to figure.

The other issue is FOX News. Now if Glenn Beck et al are defaming the president, spreading lies as they say on a regular basis then why is the White House banning FOX from the press pool? that's kind of dictatoresque imo and only leaves us with PRAVDA so everyday you're fulfilling your own caricature even more ("geez, anything else I can help you guys with?"). We have to go through 3 1/2 more years of this crap from supposed a-dults? Sure it's easy to masturbate your liberal base and go after FOX and thereby distract your base from not fulfilling your campaign promises like signing FOCA into law but cha'know if I were a left-winger I'd be like stop your dog-and-pony show already asshole and give me the meat and potatoes, like that old lady used to say on Wendy's "where's the beef?" Who give's a rat's ass about THEM, they have a right to exist just like you and me. OOOOOOHH, FOX News, FOX News, Rush, Glenn, Sean...like passing some used-car lot or salvage yard and throwing rocks at the junkyard dog, going woof-woof and then merrily skipping along your way with your bookbag, faggot.

This wasn't a split-second decision on my part. God knows I was fairer than most but this is a ghastly administration, just in time for the Halloween. All he has to do is put on an Idi Amin mask and start munching on Glenn Beck's leg.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

This isn't the way capitalism is supposed to work


President Obama has a pay czar, a Mr. Kenneth Feinberg, and it amounts to this. All of the seven firms that got the most bailout money HAVE TO cut the salaries of their top 25 executives even as much as 90 percent!!! Firms like Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Chrysler and General Motors but Feinberg also has his eye on their highest-paid 175 execs and if he has his way which being a czar he will they would have their total compensation slashed by as much as 50 percent, this would include your bonuses and stock options. So WHY doesn't this bother more people?

The vast majority of us cannot relate to the wealthy let alone the super-wealthy and so we don't lose sleep over it. I can't, it's a world that's totally alien to me and I do have feelings on the matter. I ain't no country-club Republican that's fer sure, hell I ain't no Republican to begin with but it's times like these when you have to let go of your personal feelings and fall back on principle, you have to see the danger for what it is. It's quite apparent at least to me that Obama is anti-wealth, passionately so, it's a core belief of his, in fact it seems to inspire many of his actions. You couple this with the fact that the Government is now taking over certain companies and so you automatically have the element of coercion at work which is NOT the way free-markets are supposed to function. So what are we to conclude here? Now I know that many even some conservatives will make the technical argument that this still ain't socialism, far from it but I don't see it as an isolated case in times of national economic emergency, not at all but part of a much larger picture. WE ARE ON THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM. Now to be fair Bush started the ball rolling in the wrong direction with the bank bailouts but I truly wonder if even he would have gone this far. In short you can be poor as dirt and still find all of this disturbing and I can only see this as only the beginning, the tip of a very large iceberg.

The Government telling top business executives how much they can earn, I don't care the context here or the purported economic exigencies of the moment, that's pure Marxism plain and simple and if some fellow conservatives find my views to be somewhat radical then don't visit here. To say that the seven firms at issue are partially owned by the taxpayer, well that's a soothing and deliberately misleading way of framing the matter but they're really owned by the federal government, I really had no choice in the matter so how could they be mine? If you find this too conspiratorial or uncongenial to the sensibilities of liberals for your tastes then go visit Joe Scarborough, I simply want my country back.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

I'm not an extreme libertarian, I say leave the gerbils alone

I've been meaning to do a blog like this for some time now but waited for the right moment to present itself and now it seems I got one. Former ABCer John Stossel has joined the Glenn Beck team. OVERALL I like Stossel though I disagree in a few areas (e.g. drug legalization). So why has a collective movement based solely it would seem on the concept of liberty (libertarianism) never really taken off? the wisdom of libertarianism would seem to be self-evident after all. It's why prostitution is still illegal in this country and we are still suffering under the income tax. Them be funny issues, I always thought the Supreme Court reasoning in Roe applied vastly more to prostitution than feticide and I have always maintained it's no business of the Government's whatsoever if the service you're willing to provide to others involves say painting their house or retiling their roofs for a fee set by YOU. Well maybe the reason is folks still have some social concerns. If a guy on angel dust wreaks havoc against others the libertarian would seem to say the larger issue is his liberty to use a dangerous substance, most others see a greater interest in protecting society at large here. With the whores they cause traffic jamups and other problems in nice residential neighborhoods. Same thing with the strip clubs, there's always some asshole with a grievance who can't just go there to have a good time, has to slash somebody. Now this consenting adults stuff that always gets thrown in your face like if you criticize Letterman, well sure up to a point but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to your private personal views on say adultery. Now let the other ball drop and say it was Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity who had affairs with staffers, why the left-wing bloggers would STILL be talking about it. Hell there are some sexual practices I have definite opinions on, the libertarian would seem to say it's all good, I say if you like somebody to stick a sound in your penis there's something wrong with you, same deal with scatting but I ramble...

Libertarianism, what does it mean to you?

Monday, October 19, 2009

Can Jon Corzine get any more pro-abortion?

Judging from his campaign ads against Republican challenger Chris Christie you'd think Abortion was the biggest issue facing NJ. You remember Corzine, this clown was speeding without a seatbelt in his SUV going to that nappy-headed 'hos meeting, now he's got corrupt rabbis in his state laundering money but as Governor apparently feels A Woman's Right to Choose will what exactly, stimulate NJ's economy and create jobs? Still and all the polls are practically neck and neck which hearkens back to an earlier political analysis of mine, only folks who actually plan on getting an abortion sometime in their adult life would care this much about where Christie comes down on the issue. Now I hear some pro-choice grumbles in the back row there but it's just like with adultery, as one young guy at work told me "I don't think people actually plan on cheating when they first get married." Now one might make the case that if the States were free to legislate on the Matter once again Corzine's strategy might make some sense unless he's thinking Roe is so shaky it'll be overturned any day now. Corzine, I never liked the guy, what can I say?

Thursday, October 15, 2009

NFL pussies


By now everyone knows RUSH wants to buy the St. Louis Rams. As you also know the Rev. Al Sharpton went to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to nix the bid saying Rush is divisive. Al Sharpton talking about healing and unity would be like if Dave Letterman gave a seminar on sexual harassment. So today we found out that Dave Checketts, the former MSG exec and leader of the bid group that Rush belongs to kicked Rush off citing, oh I don't know something that Rush once said on ESPN about some black quarterback. OK stop right there!!

Gotta explain something about that remark and others like it. It was a racialist comment not a racist one. It's as if you said Jews kvetch alot when they go out to restaurants, you don't hate Jews but the statement does have a racial component to it, even Jackie Mason uses it in his monologues alot. How many times has this happened at work? some black worker gets away with, well practically everything and someone will say that they can't get away with the same stuff 'cause they're white. That's not racist, that's racialist and sometimes they may be right.

So what is the genesis of this now ageless charge that conservatives are a bunch of racists? Is it because we generally oppose racial preferences aka affirmative action? Is it that simple?? or is it THAT and the ancillary comments like Rush made? The Willie Horton ad used by Bush Sr. against Michael Dukakis is now considered infamous but was it really? That was a legitimate campaign issue about the furlough program in Massachusetts and if people wanted to take that as code for white fear of blacks, tapping into the crime theme well so be it. Was it a racialist ad? perhaps but it's only infamous in the minds of people like Bill Moyers and, oh hell why don't we throw in Phil Donahue too, but the rest of the country got the real lesson about liberalism is bad for society and sent little Mikey with his army helmut packing.

A Final Word -- conservative icons like Rush and now Glenn Beck in this blogger's opinion spend way too much time responding to their critics which leads nowhere. When Hannity does it it sounds like a whine like some stray cat you just fed but he keeps on with the mournful meowing, it's like what is that?? Ignore the criticism as in totally, wear your extremist label with pride, wallow in the fact that you make liberals miserable and only complain if they don't spell your name right. You'll come across as a dark figure, a kind of cultural antihero and you'll swagger in that bar where Olbermann and Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough (he may as well be a liberal) like to hang out and you will relish every minute of it, the VIBE in the room because of your sheer presence and you'll park it down right next to them, you're one cool dude, don't say ANYTHING, you have a couple of brewskies and a smoke and then leave and the ladies at the corner table sitting in the semidark will be duly impressed and intrigued by your mystery, your manly silence, the enigma of your past suffering, your very lonerhood has made you more sexy it oozes out of you and them? bunch 'o' pussies. Get with the existentialist edge already!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Not a snoweball's chance in hell


Woke up this morning, popped the tube on, saw the Senate voted for some version of the health-care reform and turned it off again and went out. They're still trying to do something with this monstrosity! On my nice autumnal drive this morning up Carmel NY to catch the foliage caught some of the Glenn Beck Program and this must be a bad day or something but he played something Bill Maher just said about health-care reform on the Jay Leno Show the other night to wit "what's 60 votes? 60% of the people don't believe in evolution, they're stupid. You have to drag them to this." Thanx Bill for elucidating for the folks the very definition of communism. Here is one dark comedian who apparently sees the main point of political humor as not being to poke fun at your enemies but to destroy them. He's a hater in the Chris Hitchens mold and brings to mind the old Oscar Wilde aphorism "to be witty without being charming is an unpardonable mannerism of style." I try to think in my own blogging humor there is some remnant of love for humanity at large that tempers it all and then there was Chris Matthews saying something like someday a pellet is gonna go into Rush's head and he'll explode like Mr. Big (this is a serious political commentator?). Is it just me or does everyone need to pop a Prozac? is there something weird in the ether out there? That Obama song that those schoolchildren had to sing? Yeah I know that we had one for Bush too, thanks to Jon Stewart for pointing this out but this one was creepy like that Twilight Zone episode with the pig doctors and the pig master leader comes on the monitor to give his speech ("conformity")...if somebody can answer why Jon & Kate are important? We spend too much time behind the set anyway, gotta watch Judge Judy, Hatchett, Springer, the news at noon, the news at 5, the same news at 6 and then before we hit the pillow. You go out into the sunlight on a nice day like some blind salamander and you're squinting and covering your gaze but your eyes seem to get used to tv pixels in a hurry. Some Quinnipiac woman doesn't want her female students interning for the Late Show with David Letterman so we'll just leave it there for today.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The verdict on Glenn Beck

Many even some of those on the Right call him crazy but later on today I'm picking up his book especially for my Mom. What others call crazy I see as daring commentary, daring commentary is by definition new and fresh (simply for the fact that most others are afraid to say the same things) and so anything that is daring, new and fresh cannot be boring and Z-man considers boredom to be the bane of existence. So those are my reasons for forking over some dough for Arguing With Idiots and has nothing whatsoever to do with having to agree with every jot and tittle of what the man says. Now some are bemoaning what they call the lack of moderate voices on the Right these days but I say if you can make a cogent argument backed up by facts and actual quotes then what's the problem? Re all those radical leftists, commie czars popping up in the Obama Administration at a charitable minumum it shows a woeful lack of vetting and for that reason alone pointing this out amounts to a vast public service. Out-Of-The-Box thinking, that's me and if you can't say or even think certain things then that amounts to a kind of intellectual straitjacket. For me the vast majority of conspiracy theories are just plain wrong but geez over the course of the centuries one or two have to be right but that's a subject for another blog. Free speech is free speech and we live in an age when anything and everything is out there. It's all good.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Obama, governing hard left in a center/right country

It's like an A&P carriage with the bad wheel that always pulls to the left. At a dinner the other day at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay group, Obama went the whole nine yards. Repeal don't ask, don't tell. Yeah now the gay guy can go off to some foreign war orchestrated by a bunch of neocons and get blown away - progress. He wants a law giving domestic benefits to gay pard'ners, he wants Hate Crime legislation enacted pronto but most off all he's urging Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (the DOMA). Now most folks are more than tolerant of gay folks now but the residual distaste for the act remains, they don't want to see it codified into law somehow. Now there be a few conservative bloggers in these parts of the libertarian bent who breeze all this away but for the Rest of Us enlightenment doesn't come easy, we're fine that the sexual menu has more on it today than in the past but there ARE limits. 'Member when I went to Mt. St. Michael in the Bronx and the morality/sex ed teacher said anything besides the missionary position is kinky, pity this guy's poor wife but by the same token we ain't gonna be buying a jelly fist anytime soon (the reader will note I left out any references to gerbils, I'd like to think that's a fringe thing). BTW that movie Al Pacino would like to forget about, Cruising is icky on an existential level, nobody and I mean nobody liked it, even the gays hated it. You're disoriented after seeing it and you just sit there but being the avid DVDer you just had to watch Pacino wave the yellow hanky in the gay bar and the guy in the swing. OK so this is all cultural stuff and I said a little ways back that the case against gay marriage is based more on cultural preference than hard logic but at any rate the larger issue here is that Obama doesn't care about any of this, apparently he'd rather be a one-termer who effected radical social change, it's THAT important. Abortion can't be far behind on the agenda since he's now catching up on his campaign promises so he says. IMO Obama should go to an abortion clinic himself for a few days and watch a few of them being done especially the later-term ones, at least see firsthand what he supports wholeheartedly. Do I think Obama's a communist? I'm slower to come to these conclusions than say a Glenn Beck but I could probably be convinced over time. Obama, masturbating his liberal base but will a minority but loud base in what is basically a center/right country carry him over to a second term? Well not if half the country turns gay. Moderate he isn't, triangulation ain't his thing and you probably won't recognize this country in four years. Stay tuned for FOCA...

Saturday, October 10, 2009

But who else was in the running the Dalai Lama?

Well it wasn't gonna be Bibi we know that. As long as your name isn't George W. Bush you have a shot. I understand the rationale for Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, taking measures or trying to take measures to reduce the world's nuclear stockpile (only the most nostalgic paleocons yearn for those good ole Nagasaki days) and his outreach to Muslims in the famous Cairo speech obviously played more than a part but his mere nine months in office weaken the argument considerably I might add. Oslo Norway, known to be very liberal, don't they smoke pot over there?

So are congrats in the offing or in order from us right-wingers? not if you're Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity. Maybe O's decision to take away our radar in the Czech Republic and our interceptors in Poland had something to do with it, imagine Reagan doing this!!! but really who else was gonna win this one if you want to be totally objective about it? DR. OZ?

But Z wanted a Big News Event and he sure as hell got one!!

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Where conservatism went wrong


Theories abound but nobody's hit on it yet, nobody's even warm. ION Television here on Ch. 31 has begun showing all those classic Dirty Harry movies at night and when channel-surfing I don't care how many times I've seen them I take my thumb off the remote (The Honeymooners Syndrome). Sure the movies have their flaws, they are corny and contrived in parts but you viscerally relate to the Callahan character and that's because there's the unrelenting drive to get the bad guy. Taken as a whole they are quintessentially conservative at their core and show how liberalism is bad for society as a whole. Harry ain't no liberal. Now before I open the card and reveal the answer to today's blog question can anybody guess it? Oh come on it really ain't that hard and if you still don't get it reread a few times that part in bold-type.

Now I've been around the block enough times at various right-wing forums and blogs over the past few years to know that the majority conservative viewpoint of today is that (not even seems to be, it is) it's not all that important to get Osama bin Laden (oh God I'm giving away too much already!!) For anyone let alone an independent conservative like myself to dwell on that is to be guilty of a liberal talking point (Clue #2). In fact if he's never caught doesn't seem to bother many if not most conservatives at all, it doesn't light the conservative blogosphere on fire, that'd be health-care reform. Copenhagen, cap 'n' trade, Van Jones, Kevin Jennings (look at the labels people), Savage can't land in England, Madeleine Albright has a turkey neck, Roman Polanski, MICHAEL MOORE...

My only question is what would Harry do?

Friday, October 02, 2009

Even if I were gay I wouldn't want to have sex with David Letterman

Re that extortion plot, there's something vaguely weird about it all and even my local newsman looked stunned after the report was over that David Letterman had sex with a number of women staffers. It's as if you found out Ted Koppel was plowing the chicks all these years, this stuff is best left to the old guy on FRINGE. I can't get past the images. There's the images of the Samoan tsunami and then there's this. One affair ok but looks like feminism hasn't impacted Society as much as we thought. Dave doesn't have to go to the Playboy Mansion it seems, he's his own Hef.

workplace trendoids

People who can't finish 16 oz. bottles of Pepsi or Poland Spring and complain two days later that the boss threw out their beverage even though they can't seem to finish off a 1/4-1/2 inch level of the remaining fluid at the end of the day. Finish your beverage and there won't be a problem, this was never an issue for me. People who have lockers at work, isn't that getting a little too into it?

uncool bosses

Bosses who've known you for years and STILL work you to death, who won't ease up and have absolutely no humor. You're not asking to have a few cold ones after work with the guy, you're not even asking to have sex with the guy just be a little human is all. Main problem with the World today, nobody's cool.

people who take hour-long showers

I have a friend who does this and I asked him one day what does he do in there? He says he thinks. So you're there scrubbing your nuts, Ole Socrates and somebody else has to get in there. Nice guy, even the cat is waiting to use the litter box. He recently picked up a second part-time job and I says how's it going? and he says at least it's something. So I'm lazy for holding down only one job?

Stranded

A philosophical question

Does conservatism or do conservatives in general come to preordained conclusions? Should conservatives come to preordained conclusions, the Insta-Opinion? Lately it's how to treat Roman Polanski (cut off his gonads and sautee them) but it could be anything. Is this good or can we at least differ around the edges?